SparlockMD
I was 1st generation born-in. My dad was anointed, a pioneer, and an elder. My mother is the perfect submissive JW wife. I played the part of the perfect obedient JW child rather well so we were very much in the ‘in’ crowd. I went out in service a LOT. Dad retired when I was 4 or 5 and before that he worked nights and we went in service out every day. I loved it, after all who doesn’t love a cute, well-spoken kid in a little suit? Every householder was mine. I went to school for K-6 and then homeschooled and went back to every day field service. The series of events that led me to start doubting are murky but when I was 12-13 dad had to step down. Somewhere around the same time he got really sick and I was staying home to take care of him since mom still had to work full time. He was bedridden for months and by the time he was feeling well enough to get up he had a bad ass beard so we wanted a family portrait with it, but his first visit to the hall someone was offended by his beard, went to the elders about it, and an elder told him he had to shave. The man hadn’t been to the hall in months and the first time he is, his spiritual family was too offended by his facial hair to show some genuine love to the brother they had supposedly missed all this time? Dad stayed home for another two weeks until we had the photos taken before shaving but I was pissed. I had a glimpse through the love rhetoric for the first time and didn’t like what I saw but no one else thought it was wrong. Human imperfection and all. Fast forward a few months and I’m getting baptized. Partly to fit in (to a hot girl, never happened unfortunately), but also because I wanted our status back. People treated us differently now that dad wasn’t the anointed, pioneer, elder rockstar. He was just an anointed guy with no privileges whatsoever except answering and field service. He couldn’t even pray. I got dunked, started auxiliary pioneering and then pioneering. Yay, were cool again! The thing was, by now I hated field service. It was boring and stupid. I hated giving talks, people applauded and told me what a great job I did but they were liars. I hated helping out with demonstrations, they were inaccurate and pointless exercises that did nothing to prepare anyone for a real conversation. I hated meetings. The talks were boring and repetitive, the watchtower was a grade school reading exercise, so I read the bible instead of actually paying attention. Just the parts about wars and killing because what guy doesn’t like a good action read? Then there were the rules, and they brought questions, which in turn brought even more questions. Why did god care so much about my facial hair? Or the video games I played, the books I read, and the movies I watched? What was so wrong about my music? Why can’t I buy a sports car? What was wrong with wearing my cap backwards, having words on my t-shirt, or having fashionably ripped jeans? And how could this same god be cool with men sending their daughters out to be raped by cities full of men? Why wasn’t it enough to be a good person? Doesn’t it make sense to go to college and get an education? You’re quoting an article from the 50’s, those kids obviously had time to go. Why did you have to be a good person AND follow all these pointless rules to not die? I had so many questions and I already knew the price of questioning. EVERYONE knows the price of questioning. But going to doors and going on stage to parrot some stuff that didn’t really sense didn’t work for me so I stopped pioneering, convinced my folks we should switch halls, dropped all my ‘privileges’ and did the bare minimum to not be inactive. Then I met my first real girlfriend. We’ll call her Julia. She was from another hall, and she was a bit of a badass. She liked metal, R rated movies, and cuddling. I was smitten. But she wasn’t one of the ‘cool kids’. I still was, somehow, but Julia and her family was ‘spiritually weak’ and the rumor mill was not kind to them. I didn’t know until I moved to her hall (yeah, I reeeaaaallly liked her). Most of what they said about her was baseless, some of it was true, but regardless she is an incredible person. A good person who for all they knew had made mistakes, was repentant, and been reprimanded for it. She deserved better than to be treated like an outcast. Her sister was a devout and sanctimonious pain in the ass (who I loved dearly) but they dragged her completely innocent name through the mud too. People who had never met them would warn others to stay away from them. Through Julia and her family I learned of the dark side of witnesses: the treatment of women in the organization, the rumor mill, and the way elders punish victims who were good people, and went to them for help. My doubts grew into belief that either God would kill me in Armageddon (which was fine because I didn’t want to live forever under idiotic rules, in a world filled with self-righteous assholes, serving the first Asshole); or I’d make it because I’m a good person and none of the rules actually mattered because god wasn’t an Asshole; or there was no god and I should be a good person for the sake of good and not god. At some point my dad found porn in my room for like the 4th time and had a long chat with me. This time was slightly different than the last 3 times because he said if I didn’t go to the elders he would (I don’t know if he ever did). He also told me why he had to step down years ago, it was because when he was a teenager he raped his little sister. To me, either God had shit taste in his choice for the ‘ruling class’ or dad was delusional. 5 minutes on a computer gave me a ton of information on child molestation cases with JWs and it seemed a lot less likely, if there was a God, that he would have any special relationship with the organization. Julia and I broke up and I wanted out of the area so I found work in another state. I didn’t want to be a witness anymore and this was the perfect way to stop going altogether. After I moved I googled ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ and read the Wikipedia, then tried to disprove the criticism (Some tiny part of me still wanted to believe I guess). I will say that some of the criticism that was based on WT quotes was taken out of context but the rest held up to scrutiny. Then, I came across Crisis of Conscience in my research. I tried disproving that too (APOSTATE LIES!!!) but couldn’t. Everything he said was verifiable except for the arguments based on correspondence. It’s hard to read that book and not be furious. Then I read about cult mind control and between CoC and that research, all the questions I had made sense and I was so disgusted by the religion that I vowed to never go back. I didn’t stop researching for over a year. I downloaded publications going back to the 1800’s. I watched movies, read books and court documents and experiences and after a while I just stopped being shocked and angry at the suffering that organization has caused or the duplicity used in denying their own culpability. The only sad thing about freedom is knowing that people you love are still slaves… Anyhow, now I’ve been free for a couple years and its awesome. If you actually read this whole thing you rock. Category:Born In Category:Brother Category:Life story Category:Fader